By Sanghita Dey, Staff Writer
On Friday, September 11, 2015, the Career Management Center (CMC) in association with Allegiant Airlines brought an exciting case competition to campus. Two Allegiant executives, Mr. Brent Jenkins and Mr. Mathew Packer judged the competition and $2,000 voucher in prize was up for winners.
The day started with a presentation by the executives of Allegiant airlines, offering students an insight into the industry. In all, 11 teams in a group from three or four were given four hours to tackle the challenging case. The case was to design a loyalty program for Allegiant’s customers. Allegiant’s customers are unique. Majority of them fly once in a year mostly for holiday trips and prefer cheap air tickets. Designing a loyalty program for non-frequent flyers was the challenge.
Allegiant Case Competition Winners
The case presentation started at 1:25 PM. Every team had five minutes to present and two minutes for question answer round. Despite the time crunch, all teams presented excellent solutions. The team of, 1st year MGM T-birds, Alan Carrizosa (MGM ’16, Mexico), Anubhav Sharma (MGM ’16, India), and Ragini Oruganti (MGM ’16, India) emerged the winner. They concluded that a general loyalty program is not suitable to Allegiant and proposed a unique idea to implement referral schemes: refer five and get a free ticket. Prof. Steven Gemmiti said “Though everyone presented good ideas the concept brought by the winning team was impressive”. “The competition introduced a new thought process in me” said Ragini. Alan and Anubhav plan to visit Las Vegas after this week’s mid-terms to celebrate.
Being a participant, I must say it was a great experience. A perfect setting where you get exposed to all essential ingredients of success i.e. team work, time management and strategic thinking.
Let’s keep competing!